The comic artwork of Ryan Claytor.

With the Michigan State University Comics Forum taking place at the end of this month, I thought it might be fun to show a process breakdown of how this year’s poster came to fruition. Here’s the final piece, for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet:

I started by offering Sergio what we could for a poster, which he graciously accepted. He came back with a pretty ambitious concept, which was a representation of many MSU departments all being scared out of their mind as our favorite mendicant, Groo, rounds the corner on campus.

In the background you can see MSU’s iconic Sparty statue.

The only suggestion I had for Sergio before he moved on to inks was to make a little more real estate available on the bottom right of the poster for our events and sponsor. He finished that in pretty short order:

Once the inks were complete, Sergio was off the hook and it was up to me not to ruin his masterpiece. I inked our logo by hand so that it wouldn’t look out-of-place next to Sergio’s art and included the events, dates, and sponsors in the allotted space:

My faithful intern, Kait Aleshire, came through like a champ when it was time to color-flat this monster, which basically means that all those individual areas in the illustration need to be delineated in some color, any old color, to make it easier on the colorist to grab each area and manipulate it. Here are Kait’s well-executed flats:

From this point, I started adjusting the colors to what I’d like to see in the final product, which turned-out looking something like this:

Outside of maybe adding a gradient transition to the background, I was honestly considering calling it done here. It wasn’t rendered, but my workload was pretty hectic at this point in time and I’ll admit to thinking, “It’s probably good enough.”

Thankfully, I tapped some reservoir of gumption to power through the final stages of rendering, lighting, and color-holds because working with Sergio really was a bucket-list item of mine. When all was said and done, he said it was, “Perfect, Amigo.”

However, after a brief moment of further inspecion, Sergio found an error on my part:

I’d inadvertently mistaken a tangent line for a dress instead of flesh. I’m glad he caught it at the final hour or I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to un-see it later in life. So here’s the final piece:

Finally, I’d like to thank a bunch of people in rapid-fire bullet-point style, because this wouldn’t have happened without you:

– Sergio for trusting your artwork with an unknown colorist.
– Kait for taking some of the load off my plate during a busy time.
– My right-hand men, Jay and Zack, who are integral parts of the MSU Comics Forum committee.
– The newly-formed MSU Comics Forum Promotions Committee, who have been liberally distributing this poster around Lansing, MI and surrounding areas.
– All of our sponsors who make recurring donations to keep the MSU Comics Forum free, open to the public, and allow it to return year after year

This year’s poster has already been a dream come true for me and I’m counting the days until I can share the event with you.